How much pasture is needed per cow: the number of hectares of land for grazing

Table Of Contents

How many hectares of land do you need for 1 cow?
How to graze cows?

Rational cow feeding greatly improves the quality of dairy and meat products. In order to properly organize the feeding process, it is important to know or calculate how much pasture needs to be allocated per cow. The required grazing area will vary from case to case and will at least depend on the age of the animal and the characteristics of the pasture.

How many hectares of land do you need for 1 cow?

In order to have enough feed for livestock, you need to sow the land. Many factors influence the structure of sown areas on arable land. Some of the most significant are the specialization of the economy, the natural and weather conditions of the region, the plowing of agricultural land, and the area of pastures.

Therefore, the percentage of different forage crops will be different for each farm:

For beef cows:

cereals - 36-40%;
perennial herbs - 41-45%;
annual grasses and silages - 12-15%.

For dairy cows:

cereals - 33-36%,
perennial herbs - 40-44%;
annual grasses and silages - 14-17%;
root crops - 2-3%.

Based on this structure, the recommended average crop area per head should be:

cereals - 0.37-0.50 hectares;
perennial grasses - 0.43-0.60 hectares;
silos - 0.17-0.22 hectares;
root crops - 0.03-0.04 hectare4.

In the end, it turns out that at least 1 hectare of land comes out per head of a cow.

How to graze cows?

The transition to grazing should be done in stages. Within 10-12 days, they begin to apply top dressing with roughage, and later add molasses. This is done in order to stabilize cicatricial digestion. It is important to take into account that the height of the grass stand per hectare should not exceed 15 centimeters, so that liquid manure does not fall on the leaves and does not remain with the grass stand for the next harvest.

In addition to forage crops, a minimum of 150 grams of s alt should be present in the diet. To provide all the needs for micro and macro elements, magnesium, cob alt, manganese and other additives are added to the s alt. For grazing, not only food is important, but also watering.

The amount of water is organized at the rate of 70 liters of water per head. On especially hot days, the volume is increased to 120 liters.

Knowing the peculiarities of the organization of the pasture period, you can consistently get the right amount of products. With proper grazing, a cow receives no less milk than she gave indoors.